#HellaBlack expands its impact, audience at BCA’s Cyclorama
Sound Check is the Globe’s weekly guide to concerts, tunes, and trends rooted in Boston and beyond. This column covers April 5-11.
At Boston Center for the Arts, the art of mixtape curation isn’t just alive and well, it’s growing.
Since 2019, the performing arts complex has hosted the #HellaBlack showcase, a “live mixtape” featuring homegrown artists like Oompa, Timi O, Brandie Blaze, and Camp Blood. Lyndsay Allyn Cox, formerly BCA’s senior director of programs, created the event to provide Black creators with a platform to authentically express their vision. Her goal was to eliminate any outside pressure to modify performances as a way of appeasing wider (and in most cases, whiter) audiences.
Her mission clearly resonated with Boston acts and their fans; every prior iteration of the showcase has sold out either the complex’s Mills Gallery or Plaza theaters. The packed houses signaled a continued demand for this kind of pressure-free creative environment — and the need to further develop the series.
On Monday, #HellaBlack’s sixth and latest mixtape grows in size and scope, shifting to BCA’s Cyclorama to double the event’s capacity from 140 to 300. This year’s lineup also broadens the variety of artists invited to participate. For instance, DJ Nomadik and Capella Auriga — who last year released her project “333” — are on this year’s bill alongside drag act Killah Croc and aerialist Kiannah Bernard. (Performances begin at 7 p.m. and tickets are $35.)
“We are putting out there that Black art isn’t a monolith,” reflects Michaila Cowie, BCA’s associate director of theatre arts.
After performing in last year’s edition, spoken word poet Amanda Shea stepped up to curate the sixth “volume” of #HellaBlack and shape its expansion. Known as a tastemaker who’s tapped into different sectors of Boston’s arts scene, she made it a priority to select both burgeoning acts and seasoned — yet often overlooked — performers for Monday’s live mixtape. With last March’s showcase fresh in her mind, she has a firsthand understanding of #HellaBlack’s empowering platform, and she’s eager to see the event’s impact swell on Monday.
“There are so many artists in this city that need the opportunity, and right now a lot of them are kind of scrambling with this scarcity mentality of feeling like there’s not enough,” Shea says. “I feel like this is going to take not only #HellaBlack to the next level, it’s also going to take the BCA and all of the other artists as well to the next level.”
GIG GUIDE
Fresh off the release of their Friday single “Laundry Mountain,” Sinnet lead a lineup of Boston and Somerville indie rock with Tequila Sirens and the Smallest Town Ensemble on Friday at Rockwood Music Hall; Miami’s Aniyé Music — currently a presidential scholar at Berklee — performs there on Monday with her swoon-worthy mix of jazz, soul, and R&B.
JJ Grey & Mofro ’s swampy soul-rock floods the House of Blues on Friday to support the Florida band’s February album “Olustee.” R&B singer Mariah the Scientist (inset) also brings her “To Be Eaten Alive” tour to the venue on Saturday.
Folk takes center stage at City Winery this weekend with back-to-back shows from Joshua Radin, who caps off his spring tour in Boston on Saturday and Sunday. Maddie Poppe, the Midwestern singer-songwriter who took home the “American Idol” crown in 2018, will open both shows. New York chanteuse Rizo pairs her sequined stage presence with a set from Boston’s Walter Sickert & The Army of Broken Toys on Sunday at Crystal Ballroom, while Minnesota emo duo Remo Drive park their new record “Mercy” in Davis Square on Wednesday.
Still crooning at 73, soul icon Lee Fields flaunts his inimitable swagger at the Paradise Rock Club on Thursday. Monophonics bolster Fields’s finesse with a fitting backdrop of retro soul and psychedelia, which the San Francisco band perfected on their 2022 album “Sage Motel.”
In Gloucester, Ward Hayden & the Outliers bring their quickly-expanding catalog of country tunes to The Cut on Thursday. Within the past year, the band has released the studio album “South Shore,” a live tribute album saluting Hank Williams, and an earnest cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Brilliant Disguise.”
NOW SPINNING
The Pernice Brothers, “Who Will You Believe.” Over 25 years after the release of their debut, “Overcome by Happiness,” Joe Pernice and his Bostonborn band are duking it out with a vastly different emotion: grief. Grappling with the loss of three close friends, Pernice and Co. craft a dynamic range of roots rock and Americana on their latest offering, tapping Neko Case for the duet “I Don’t Need That Anymore.”
Vampire Weekend, “Only God Was Above Us.” Here comes the follow-up to 2019’s “Father of the Bride.” The New York group’s lithe fifth studio album flits between jangly rock, twinkling piano pop, and lush orchestral arrangements. Their balletic performance peaks on the single “Gen-X Cops,” a reflection on generational penances from frontman Ezra Koenig, whose chorus hits like a soaring “hallelujah.”
Khruangbin, “A LA SALA.” Let the Boston Calling preparations commence with kaleidoscopic instrumentals from Khruangbin, who will perform on Saturday, May 25, at this year’s edition of the Memorial Day weekend festival. Meaning “to the room” in Spanish, the eclectic record is a literal call for togetherness, which the Houston trio exemplify as they meld mellow notes of surf, dub, and psychedelia on their fourth LP.
BONUS TRACK
Boston-born pop artist Sasha Alex Sloan performed her new single “Highlights” on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” earlier this week, sharing an aching sliver of her forthcoming album “Me Again.” The new record, which arrives May 17, marks Sloan’s first release as an independent artist after roughly five years with RCA Records.